Investigating gender, the right of gender self-determination, and other crucial identity-related issues as seen through the eyes of modern art practice, constitute the themes of the multifaceted action “Ident-alter-ity” that will take place within the framework of the main program of the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art.

My photographs in “BUT STILL IN ONE PIECE” embrace the fluidity of gender identity and explore the possibility that we each hold a myriad of alternative selves within us.

Among the artists included in “IDENTALTERITY”are David Hockney and Lynda Benglis. Hockney converses with the homo-erotic poetry of C.P. Cavafy through a series of engravings that illustrate a new, 1967 English translation of the Alexandrian Greek poet by Stephen Spender and Nikos Stangos. In “Female Sensibility,” (video 1972) Benglis presents two heavily made-up women kissing and caressing each other. The action is read against feminist film theory of the “male gaze.”

An exhibition, a symposium and a performance are at the core of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Action Field Kodra, Thessaloniki Pride and the Municipality of Thessaloniki. The exhibition gives the opportunity to both established artists and emerging artists to engage an open dialogue through their work.

“Photographer Trix Rosen’s work about gender ambiguity empowers the viewer to question conventional definitions of beauty and remind us it is more important to define our own personal beauty rather than being defined by others.”
Maureen Harrison and Alexsandra Simakowicz, Curators, BREAKING THROUGH TRADITION

Please join me at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange NJ for BREAKING THROUGH TRADITION, a group show celebrating the American cultural transition towards inclusivity.

My HE-SHEportfolio presents an ongoing series of portraits documenting my seventeen-year collaboration with French artist, Fred Koenig, who unselfconsciously dares the viewer to cross over boundaries of imagination and desires. Observe him in ‘The Sea Change’ and be confronted by a fearless man who is empowered and transformed by the ambiguity of his sexuality.

‘Ravaged,’ presents Fred within the decaying landscape of a New Jersey historic farmhouse. Perhaps this intimate pose and an abandoned structure lay bare a similar beauty and vulnerability.

Fred and I collaborate not just in our art, but in our political activism. Talking about his HIV/AIDS status, Fred told me that it is part of what he shows me by exposing his soul to my camera.

‘Changed Landscapes’ also reveals a figure who has dared me to look deeper because she wasn’t afraid. Here is a woman who bravely explores the physical and emotional contours of her new form after a double mastectomy.

This portrait can be viewed as a narrative about her life and as a defining moment of transfiguring change. Bald, breast-less and scarred, she is fearless and beautiful, essentially and eternally female.

These images record biographical moments, measured not as isolated fragments of time, but revealing the narrative arc of both Fred and Takami’s life. They are capturing the past, recording the present and projecting into the future. How courageous and optimistic to look inward and become stronger through the experience.

Autumn has become a time for reminiscence. Two of my older art works that have captured profound biographical moments are in exhibitions on the East and West Coasts.

‘CHILDHOOD MEMORIES’ opened on October 19 at the historic Mills Pond House Gallery in St James, New York. ‘Thoughtful Eyes, Fanciful Dreams’ is based on a 1979 iconic photograph of my niece, Jaimie, when she was six-years-old and staying overnight at my NYC studio. Jaimie, her sister Lani and their brother Scott, spent many weekends with me in my downtown loft as they were growing up.

‘Thoughtful Eyes, Fanciful Dreams’ records a moment, measured not as an isolated fragment of time, but suggesting the narrative arc of childhood/ capturing past, recording present and projecting into the future. Jaimie, cocoon-wrapped in a feathered cape, appears like a chrysalis emerging in the moment of becoming. Her wide-eye gaze draws the viewer into the enigma of childhood dreams.

The presentation of the printed image on cotton voile adds to the fluidity of the work. It can appear as a tangible portrait of a young girl, or depending on where one is standing in relationship to the piece, the image can become intangible, and disappear into the back light. ‘Thoughtful Eyes, Fanciful Dreams’ reflects not just the fleetingness of memory, but the evanescence of childhood itself.

My brother, Al and his children, Sean and Amanda came to the reception. The Rosen Clan also included my brother, Michael, his wife Roberta and my nephew Scott with his wife, Laura, and their baby Nico, attending his first art exhibition.

My second art work, ‘Syd and Jacki at Summer Camp’ was included in the exhibition, ‘EARLY WORKS’ at the RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco, California that opened on October 17th. The entire gallery of early photos can be viewed online .

This photograph dates back to 1961 when I was 14-years old at Cejwin, a summer camp in Port Jervis, New York. ‘EARLY WORKS’ is an exhibition that examines the naive imagery made by contemporary photographers when they were children.

The curators asked for “early images that often reveal surprising talent, visual intuition, and honesty. Kept for many decades in shoeboxes and faded albums, the images are often cherished belongings that play a key role in defining the self as artist. This exhibition,” they said “will be a close look at photographers’ earliest works, paired with personal narratives about the images and their role in each photographers’ development as an artist.”

The photograph of Syd and Jacki, my two best friends that summer, was taken with a plastic Brownie Starmite camera. I had been in the same bunk with these girls for five summers. I was lucky to have had a camera, and took pictures of my bunk mates during our days and nights together. This was the summer when I began to realize that while some of them were showing a big interest in boys, I was thinking more about girls. I was also very serious about my drawing and dreamed about living in NYC and becoming an ‘artist.’

In the photo ‘Syd and Jacki,’ I can see how aware I was of Syd’s gesture in her body language as she is lying down and looking at me, and how I also captured Jacki in the background obliviously looking into a mirror and doing her hair. This picture depicts a naïve eroticism and reveals what was both hidden and suggestive in our first bloom of teenage sexuality. I also remember how much I didn’t understand about myself and what I was feeling, other than I seemed different than the other girls in my interests and desires.

This picture reminds me how scary it was to not have the support of family and friends, or the vocabulary to be able to speak the words that became one of the defining elements of my life, my fine-art photography and my future career as a socially concerned photo-journalist.

On the night ‘EARLY WORKS’ opened, I decided to try to locate the girls in this cherished photograph. Thanks to FB, I found Syd within 30 minutes and we were soon excitedly chatting and recollecting our adventures as old friends do. In the next week, Sydell located Jacki and the rest of our 1961 summer bunkmates. We are planning a reunion in NYC.

So, find some of your own old photographic images and perhaps rediscover what they mean to you now!

In 1986 I was a freelance photojournalist living in the northern Philippines. An invitation by an indigenous Filipina from the Kalinga tribe to visit her village, nestled deep within the hand-carved rice terraces of the Cordillera Mountains, brought me into an isolated landscape that appeared to be untouched by modern times. Fascinated by the images of an ancient people beginning the process of a contemporary metamorphosis, I returned many times over 25 years to visit my friends, and to photograph their rapidly changing historic landscape.

I’m sharing this project with you because I’m hoping you might be interested in supporting the completion of this historic work. I’m aiming to raise $8,900 by mid-February 2013.

With support from this funding I would return to the Philippines for six weeks in March 2013. I’d bring with me earlier photographs that would be used as points of departure to trigger memories among the family members, photograph portraits and conduct video interviews and, with the guidance of the local population, would document the rapidly perishing vernacular architecture as I also record the newer buildings. After returning home, I would apply your support to cataloging the documentation, printing photographs, digitizing older film and editing my video recording. I would also be arranging for future lectures, exhibitions and a book project, A Kalinga Journey Through Time, that would aim to preserve the material I have collected. Photographing the changes that have impacted this community will also reveal much about how a tribal society evolves into the 21st century.

If you can support this project with a donation, in any capacity, together we can make this idea a reality! Sharing the project with others and sending me your thoughts are also very valuable ways to show your support.

About USA Projects:
Founded by the Ford, Rockefeller, Rasmuson and Prudential Foundations, United States Artists has supported the work of individual artists since 2005. Donating through USA’s micro-philanthropy initiative, USA Projects, supports the work of accomplished artists all across America and is tax deductible.

Enter into Faust’s Study, a trompe l’oeil painted room, and be confronted by a fearless man who is empowered and transformed by the duality of his sexuality. His starkly lit, painted face and figure emerging from the shadows are a tantalizing contrast to the painted Adam and Eve on the rear wall. Faust’s Study directs the viewer’s attention to the relationship between the interior details and the subject, suggesting a narrative in which the gender performance artist, Frédéric Koenig, who can so naturally appear both handsome and beautiful, dares the viewer to cross over boundaries of imagination and desire. Faust’s Study, like much of my gender imagery, blurs the traditional definitions of maleness and femaleness.

ABOMINATION: WRESTLING WITH LEVITICUS 18:22is my first artistic collaboration with Susan Kaplow. Our installation explores the damage done by this biblical passage (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination”) and its homophobic legacy. The first to wrestle with the meaning of this verse were the early Rabbis and so the chosen text here is the Talmud page where their commentary is recorded.

Because this abhorrence of her lesbian sexuality made Susan feel “dead,” she had the Talmud text printed on fabric like that used in the traditional Jewish burial ritual and then hand-sewed it into shrouds (tachrichim). Susan asked me if I would photograph her in these shrouds and, together, we began the process of exploring the physical and emotional dynamics of being enclosed in the garments. We came to realize that the images represented our own commentary on the text, reflecting the impact on those who suffer this curse. Through the constitutive role of photography, we transformed and transcended the pain, ultimately retiring the shrouds to a geniza, in which sacred texts and objects which have outlived their ritual use are placed.

The Sexuality Spectrum is a groundbreaking exploration of diverse sexual orientations through the creativity of fifty international contemporary artists. The exhibition explores a broad range of subjects, including the evolving social and religious attitudes toward sexuality; issues of alienation, marginalization, and inclusion; the impact on the family, child-rearing, and life stages; violence and persecution; AIDS/HIV; and the influence of the LGBTQI community on the Jewish and larger world. This exhibition exemplifies the spirit of the College-Institute’s and the Reform Movement’s commitment to free and open inquiry, inclusivity and outreach, and advocacy on behalf of human rights and the eradication of sexual discrimination.

In 2008 I crisscrossed the heartland of the Ukraine to photograph historic Jewish cemeteries and hand-carved tombstones in cities, towns and shtetls. Every site had a story to tell and each stone was an artistic treasure filled with iconographic beauty and mystery. The headstones of the Kohanim, descendants of the Biblical priests, had hands joined in a gesture of blessing. The pitcher pouring water represented the tribe of Levites, the assistants to the priests. Some epitaphs were intricately carved, the stones decorated in an elaborate Jewish script covering the entire surface; others held only the most minimal outline of the Star of David. Other friezes depicted symbols of lineage and gender. These gravestones, some dating from the 1400’s, depict a visual history of the once vast community of Eastern European Jews, and serve as reminders of the people who lived in this place and died.

Less than two years ago the Shoemaker-Houck Farm was in excellent condition, one of the premier structures located within the New Jersey Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area that is owned by the National Park Service. The front portion of the house was built in 1822 while the rear portion was built in the eighteenth century. This National Register Site has no protection and has now become vandalized. The back door is wide open and window glass is missing, sadly revealing the ruins of neglect. These scarred elements are key to understanding the rural development of northwestern New Jersey and the significant role that area played in American history.

I am drawn to the timeless nature of historic architecture because it is a repository of collective memories – a record of our heritage, the builders and the people who once inhabited these spaces. There is an urgency about what I photograph because each derelict site is a reminder of our inadequacy as cultural stewards. I look to the architectural details, to the deeply etched memories in the stones, the walls and the structures as a window to remembering our past.

Jewish Art Salon members have created “memory blocks”, with drawings, paintings or inscriptions that evoke their memory of the day.

On September 13th, 6pm these blocks will be brought to the gallery, where Tobi Kahn is exhibiting “Embodied Light: 9-11 in 2011”. Artists and writers will share their block and/or their memories of 9-11 and Kahn will discuss his exhibit. After the session, at 8pm, the blocks will be gathered and the next day they will be installed as “towers” in the windows.

Kahn’s exhibit will feature 220 memory blocks, handed out by him to various New Yorkers and returned to him with markings that commemorate the day. These blocks will be continually rearranged over the length of the exhibition. The Jewish Art Salon’s blocks will be displayed as a separate exhibit.